I agree with il padrone in that after many years of wrenching I've never had the need to buy a torque wrench for my mostly steel bikes. Having said that, when my son bought a carbon race bike, I purchased a small Ritchey 4mm torque key for bars, stem & seatpost. For modern bikes esp carbon it seems a torque wrench is now almost mandatory to avoid crushing the carbon. My take on bolts and screws on a bike is that you don't, as someone posted, go silly tight. You soon learn what is an appropriate amount of force to use when tightening things. Pedals for instance require ime just a bit more than gentle pressure to do up. Having clean threads with a little grease applied means they will come off easily which is esp useful when travelling. I've never had one loosen while riding with this method.

Uncle Just wrote:I agree with il padrone in that after many years of wrenching I've never had the need to buy a torque wrench

Me either. In my first career I worked for 15 years in the motor trade. My feel for bolt torque developed to the point where I could torque bearing caps and cylinder head bolts on my speedway machines when an emergency trackside rebuild was required and I didn't have a torque wrench handy. I still don't use a torque wrench even for my carbon bikes.

I suspect that most regular posters in this forum spent their formulative years stripping threads and snapping bolts as I did. That gives you great practical training in what feels right. If you come to maintaining your bike without that background of destruction maybe a torque wrench is a valuable investment - just make sure you know the difference between ft-lbs and Kg-m !

You don't really need torque wrenches but I use both of mine (a small 1/4" 2-20Nm and a big 1/2" 20-200Nm) quite frequently. Tools are like bikes. N+1 everytime. I'm mystified by anyone who might think otherwise

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